Teretonga Park in Invercargill maintains its tradition of bringing some of the most exciting sporting stars from around the globe to our region when the Ascot Park Hotel Teretonga International round of the Repco NextGen NZ Championship takes place over the weekend of 24/25 January.

Nineteen drivers from eleven different countries will be on the Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Trophy grid, most of them aged between 17 to 19-years-old.

Ugo Ugochukwu, an 18-year-old New Yorker, looks to be one of the hot prospects. Ugochukwu won the 2024 Macau Grand Prix and was until recently part of the McLaren Development Driver Programme.

He has competed successfully in Britain, the UAE, Italy and throughout Europe. After this series he will return to Europe to contest his second year in the FIA F3 Championship.

From the UK comes 17-year-old Freddie Slater, the winner of the 2025 FRECA Championship.

Slater was a 2020 World Karting Champion, a dual European kart champion and has won both the Italian F4 Championship and the UAE F4 title.

One man in the field is already a double World Champion.

At just twenty-five years of age Kalle Rovanperä of Finland has already won two World Rally Championship’s and has retired from rallying to pursue a single seater journey which he hopes will take him to the top.

Rovanperä was the youngest ever podium finisher, rally winner and World Champion in World Rally Championship history.

Kiwi Ryan Wood, ‘Woody’, is an immense talent who has raced at Teretonga Park many times.

A race winner in Australian Supercars Wood is competing in single seaters for the first time to learn and prepare for the 2026 season.

He heads a line-up of talented kiwis including Louis Sharp, Zack Scoular and Sebastian Manson.

Sharp finished fourth in the 2022 British F4 Championship despite missing the early races while he waited to reach the age to compete.

He was the winner of the 2022 UAE F4 Trophy Championship, won the 2023 British F4 title and the 2024 GB3 Championship and is now entering his second year in F3 at the age of just eighteen.

Dubai based Scoular was runner-up to Arvid Lindblad in last year’s championship while Manson won two races on his way to sixth overall last year.

Since then, he has competed in the US and Japan where he finished second in the Japanese Formula Regional Championship.

Japanese duo, Kanato Le and Jin Nakamura have both shown early speed in the series.

Le has won a European Karting title in the past while Nakamura was the Japanese F4 runner-up in 2023 and is headed to F3 in 2026.

Fionn McLaughlin of Ireland narrowly missed the 2023 FIA Karting World Championship title and was a dominant 2025 British F4 Champion and is a member of the Red Bull Junior Programme.

Nolan Allaer is another American in the field and races in Indy NXT, the Indycar feeder series.

Countryman Cooper Shipman from Austin, Texas, was a dominant 2025 USA F4 Champion with nine wins while Trevor Latourette was fourth in the 2025 US F4 Championship despite missing four races.

Yuanpui Cui hails from China and has had karting success while two Australians who are based in Europe, Jack Taylor and James Wharton also grace the grid.

Taylor was the 2025 GB4 Champion while Wharton will face his second year of F3 in 2026 although he has had a taste of F2.

Ernesto Rivera of Mexico is another Red Bull Junior and will race in Formula 3 this year while the field is rounded out by Brazilian Ricardo Baptista and Yevan David who will become the first Sri Lankan to race at Teretonga Park and is another destined to race in F3 this year.